How to set the context path of a web application in Tomcat 7.0

Question

I know that I can rename my webapp (or it's WAR file) to ROOT but this is a terrible way to do it, IMHO. Now I checked out the tomcat doc & it says

It is NOT recommended to place elements directly in the server.xml file

So I tried doing it another method that it suggested.

Individual Context elements may be explicitly defined: In an individual file at /META-INF/context.xml inside the application files.

So I created a /META-INF/context.xml with the following code,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context antiJARLocking="true" path="/"/>

But after deploying when I restarted the server it still failed to load the context at "/", it still loaded it with the "/<WEB_APP_NAME>"

Any pointers helpful.

Solution 1

What you can do is the following;

Add a file called ROOT.xml in <catalina_home>/conf/Catalina/localhost/

This ROOT.xml will override the default settings for the root context of the tomcat installation for that engine and host (Catalina and localhost).

Enter the following to the ROOT.xml file;

<Context 
  docBase="<yourApp>" 
  path="" 
  reloadable="true" 
/>

Here, <yourApp> is the name of, well, your app.. :)

And there you go, your application is now the default application and will show up on http://localhost:8080

However, there is one side effect; your application will be loaded twice. Once for localhost:8080 and once for localhost:8080/yourApp. To fix this you can put your application OUTSIDE <catalina_home>/webapps and use a relative or absolute path in the ROOT.xml's docBase tag. Something like this;

<Context 
  docBase="/opt/mywebapps/<yourApp>" 
  path="" 
  reloadable="true" 
/>

And then it should be all OK!

Solution 2

This is the the only solution that worked for me. Add the following to the Host node in the conf/server.xml file.

<Context path="" docBase="yourAppContextName">
 
  <!-- Default set of monitored resources -->
  <WatchedResource>WEB-INF/web.xml</WatchedResource>

</Context>

Update:
It can be either in : conf/server.xml
or in : conf/context.xml

Solution 3

In Tomcat 9.0, I only have to change the following in the server.xml

<Context docBase="web" path="/web" reloadable="true" source="org.eclipse.jst.jee.server:web"/>

to

<Context docBase="web" path="" reloadable="true" source="org.eclipse.jst.jee.server:web"/>

Solution 4

This little code worked for me, using virtual hosts

<Host name="my.host.name" >
   <Context path="" docBase="/path/to/myapp.war"/>
</Host>

Solution 5

It's not recommended to update the server configuration like server.xml or ROOT.xml.

You can put a context.xml configuration file under your web-application META-INF directory, with the context path setting included. This will override the default server setting?

i.e.:

<Context docBase="yourAppName" path="/yourAppPath" reloadable="true">

View more solutions

Comments

[gavenkoa]

I ever file bug for Tomcat 8 WARNING: A context path must either be an empty string or start with a '/' and do not end with a '/'. The path "/" does not meet these criteria and has been changed to ""

[rimsky]

The reason "It is NOT recommended to place elements directly in the server.xml file" given in the docs follows in the next sentence: "This is because it makes modifying the Context configuration more invasive since the main conf/server.xml file cannot be reloaded without restarting Tomcat." The accepted answer below directly solves the problem, but if you're not likely to modify this path again or restarts are not too disruptive, modifying the server.xml doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

[chrislovecnm]

Will this work with other wars in the regular webapps folder?

[Fabio Bonfante]

looking at the docs tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/context.html docbase is the path/to/yourApp and path must be "" (so an empty string) meaning the root context

[Paaske]

@chrislovecnm, yes, you can use both methods in parallell.

[Sefler]

To solve the double-deployment you can also set both "deployOnStartup" and "autoDeploy" false of Host attribute in the server.xml

[hoserdude]

I have found that if you don't rename the default ROOT folder under /webapps "the cat comes back" and it resets the docBase in the ROOT.xml. This is with VMWare's vfabric tc development server... Be warned.

[Mark Thomas]

Setting the path attribute is not valid in this case (as per the docs)

[Christopher Schultz]

I didn't downvote, but solution isn't great: path attribute is illegal in a context.xml file.

[tokhi]

using of path="" where can I find the deployed project? because there is no webapps/ROOT directory under tomcat?

[Jean Jordaan]

From the question: "I know that I can rename my webapp (or it's WAR file) to ROOT but this is a terrible way to do it, IMHO."

[Jean Jordaan]

This is in server.xml? According to e.g. Ali.Mojtehedy above that's problematic. Also, other answers state that /path/to needs to be outside of the normal webapps path.

[Tommy]

Great comment about application loading twice. That will mess up your application if you run things like elasticsearch.

[Saif]

will be at server.xml or context.xml? i see an xml tag <Context> in my context.xml

[Ismail Yavuz]

There is also a context xml tag in server.xml However server.xml usage for context defining is discouraged

[Stephane]

I didn't experience the double deployment issue. My configuration is seen at stackoverflow.com/questions/26652264/…

[Mojo]

It appears that Tomcat 7 will not allow a docBase inside /webapps now, so it would appear to be mandatory to locate the war file elsewhere.

[Jose Martinez]

Is that docBase directory absolute or relative to a specific folder?

[ulrich]

I would not like to restrict myself to just using a single webapp per tomcat instance.

[Anthony Hayward]

Seems to work fine. Of course, you don't want the ROOT application to exist in the same webapps folder to conflict with yours.

[Bogdan Zurac]

What if I want to use a WAR file instead of an exploded one? Apparently Tomcat refuses to allow this. Any ideas?

[CharlesB]

@Andrew I couldn't have it set up with a war file, ended up defining a ROOT.jar being a symlink to the jar file

[chris544]

@Mojo seems to be right about tomcat7 and having to move the application outside of webapps directory. Deploying a .war worked for me after I moved it outside of webapps directory.

[Abdull]

<catalina_home> should be <catalina_base>

[Tiz]

I second the comment by @abdull. Based on this answer, it should be <catalina_base> not <catalina_home>.

[Paaske]

According to the docs, whether you need to use <catalina_home> or <catalina_base> is depending on your installation. If you download from tomcat.apache.org, and only intend to run one instance of Tomcat per server, you'll only need <catalina_home>.

[Lucy]

I tried the above solution but it's not working for me. When i deploy the app for the 1st time i get a 404 error but when I restart the server then the app loads correctly..Any idea what i'm doing wrong??

[kimbaudi]

I created ROOT.xml in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost and set docBase to Foobar, but going to http://example.com:8080 still shows Tomcat home page instead of my app (assuming example.com is my domain and Foobar is the name of my webapp). I even tried to set docBase to /opt/tomcat/webapps/Foobar, but still not working. Of course I restart Tomcat after making changes, but not working. Any suggestions?

[kimbaudi]

I tried this, but its not working. I have an app called Foobar in /opt/tomcat/webapps/Foobar. I tried setting docBase to Foobar and also /opt/tomcat/webapps/Foobar, but when I go to `http://<host>:<port>/ I still see Tomcat home page instead of my Foobar app. I even restarted Tomcat. What am I doing wrong?

[bmaupin]

@kimbaudi See hoserdude's comment and this answer: stackoverflow.com/a/3921962/399105

[gozizibj]

Is that means i still need to put the war file under webapps first, start server, let it generate the app folder, shutdown the server, move it outside the webapps and restart server?

[Kanagavelu Sugumar]

@gozizibj yes, after moving it (unzipped war folder) from webapps to new docBase, it worked.

[Kanagavelu Sugumar]

But when i have two Service/application listening on different port, just want to handle only specific port application context. How to achieve that ? Is this ROOT.xml is configured on which port ?

[Kanagavelu Sugumar]

coderanch.com/t/494034/application-servers/…

[Kanagavelu Sugumar]

stackoverflow.com/questions/36594644/…

[Derrops]

When I make the path null it doesn't reach my app ) :

[Ravi Gupta]

Alternate solution without doinf above configuration is just rename your war file to root.war and put it under webapps directory. Automatically context path will be set to /.

[niaomingjian]

Tested in tomcat:9.0 docker and it works as 8.0 you mentioned. localhost:8080/<Your App Directory Name>/ and localhost:8080/<your app path you wish>/ both of these 2 URLs works at the same time. Found these two extracted folders under $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/.

[thinwa]

It's working, but it causes double deployment if autoDeploy="true" is set. This is already addressed by the accepted answer. 2nd, it's not recommended way to add Context section in server.xml directly. tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-9.0-doc/config/…